CHARLESTON, S.C.-- By broad consensus, the winner of Thursday night's GOP debate was Donald Trump, followed by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, with most of the postgame commentary focused on "the fight" between Cruz and Trump.
Oh, how we love a good fight.

A letter from a 93-year-old woman in Bartahatchie leads to living room in Brooksville. There on Thursday afternoon I heard stories about long-ago teenagers dancing barefoot in a local dance hall and learned some of the finer points of making Jerusalem artichoke relish.

When Thomas E. McNamara arrived in Colombia as U.S. ambassador in 1988, he encountered a hit list issued by narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar. "I was No. 1," he recalls. "Ambassadors tend to get that kind of attention."

It began with a trickle of spectators braving the frosty early morning Tuesday to watch as the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based River Salvage Co. arrived at the John C. Stennis Lock & Dam to start work on removing two barges that had lodged against the dam, one half-submerged, the other resting tranquilly atop it.